Traveler Submerged

Traveler Submerged Traveler Submerged teaches unique Diving courses, integrating Yoga, Breathwork, Meditation & Health Learn to dive with me and experience nature on a new level.

STRETCH | LEARN | DIVE | GROW

Yoga Diving: A divine union between two transformative practices. I exclusively teach and dive with Dive Systems Malta and Starfish Diving Malta—offering all my courses and guided dives through these exceptional dive centres. Be one with the ocean as we combine yoga and diving in a holistic approach that enhances your connection to the underwater world. Offerings:
- PADI Scuba Courses (Discovery to Dive Master)
- PADI Freediving Courses
- Yoga & Breathwork Workshops
- Diving Lifestyle Workshops

Diving is more than an activity; it’s a vehicle for self-exploration, growth, and transformation. Combining yoga and diving brings profound benefits—introducing stretching, breathwork, and mindfulness into every dive. With basic yoga practices, we stretch and relax the body, while pranayama breathing techniques loosen the diaphragm and teach us mindful breathing underwater. This helps to:

- Reduce air consumption
- Stay calm and relaxed in the water
- Extend dive times
- Elevate buoyancy control and overall comfort

By integrating yoga and breathwork into your diving routine, we turn every dive into a meditative experience. Let’s explore the depths together with grace, awareness, and mindfulness.

Most divers begin with a jacket BCD. I did too.It’s familiar, comfortable, and it works. And that’s important to say upf...
04/02/2026

Most divers begin with a jacket BCD. I did too.

It’s familiar, comfortable, and it works. And that’s important to say upfront.

Switching to a wing isn’t about being “more technical” or chasing trends. It’s about what happens when your equipment starts working with you instead of around you.

A backplate, harness and wing is a very simple system:
a plate on your back, a harness sized exactly to your body, and all the buoyancy placed behind you. No wrap-around air. No shifting air pockets. No unnecessary padding.

The first thing most divers notice isn’t function or performance.

It’s stability.

With a wing, the gas stays on your back. That naturally encourages a flat, horizontal position.

Buoyancy adjustments become smaller and more predictable.

Hovering feels easier. Finning becomes lighter. Gas consumption often improves without trying to “optimise” anything.

From an instructor’s point of view, that matters.

Less movement means less task loading. Less task loading means more awareness. More awareness means calmer, safer diving.

I dive a custom .nl tech wing because it fits my philosophy perfectly: minimalist, modular, and purpose-built.

Nothing extra. Nothing distracting. Just clean lines, excellent trim, and complete consistency dive after dive.

Is a wing necessary for every diver? No.

But if you care about buoyancy, trim, and how you feel underwater - not just what certification card you hold - it’s absolutely worth exploring.

The funny thing is, once divers make the switch, very few go back. Not because it’s “tech gear”, but because it makes diving feel calmer, simpler, and more intentional.

If that sounds appealing, save this post for later.

And if you already dive a wing - you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Over the past few weeks I’ve noticed a lot of thoughtful discussion around the term “technical diving” - what it means, ...
03/02/2026

Over the past few weeks I’ve noticed a lot of thoughtful discussion around the term “technical diving” - what it means, where it came from, and whether it still actually tells us anything useful.

I want to be clear upfront: I’m not the most experienced technical diver out there, and Traveler Submerged isn’t a technical diving brand. I’m still very much a student in that space. But I do spend a lot of time listening, training, and diving alongside people who’ve been doing this far longer than I have.

What’s struck me is how slippery the word technical has become.

Depending on who you ask, it can mean planned decompression, mixed gas, overhead environments, certain equipment configurations, or simply a level of commitment where you can’t just swim to the surface. And yet none of those lines are universally agreed on. The same dive can be described very differently depending on which agency someone trained with, or even which decade they started diving in.

Historically, many of the things we now label as “technical” were simply… diving. Twinsets, staged decompression, deep wrecks, long runtimes, complex logistics - all of that existed long before the term became common language. The label came later, and it seems to have grown broader ever since.

Today, technical often feels less like a precise description of a dive and more like a convenient umbrella. Sometimes it’s useful shorthand. Other times it feels like a marketing category that bundles together training pathways, equipment choices, and perceived risk, even when the actual demands of the dive don’t change.

What I find interesting is that the most experienced divers I’ve spent time with rarely lean on the label at all. They talk about planning, control, redundancy, margins, and decision-making. About commitment rather than depth. About consequence rather than configuration.

So I’m genuinely curious:
Does the term technical diving still help us understand what’s happening underwater?
Or has it become so broad that it says more about context and branding than about the dive itself?

Not trying to redefine anything here - just sharing an observation and enjoying the conversation.

I’ll also say this: a lot of my thinking around this has been shaped by training and conversations with people who teach and dive far beyond my current level. Huge credit to Chris Heitkemper (Platinum PADI CD and Tec IT) of IDC & Tec Diving Malta working with Starfish Diving Malta for the quality of his technical instruction and for opening my mind not just to deeper dives, but to entirely new pathways in how I think about planning, control, and commitment underwater.

Not a call to “go tech” - just a reminder that good training has a way of expanding how you see the whole picture.

The long awaited Sidewinder II by KISS Rebreathers! The stuff dreams are made of :)
22/01/2026

The long awaited Sidewinder II by KISS Rebreathers! The stuff dreams are made of :)

10/01/2026

Pleasure isn’t always excitement.

Sometimes it’s the nervous system realising it’s safe.

Most divers think the ocean relaxes them because it’s quiet, peaceful, or beautiful.

That’s not why.

The real shift happens before your thoughts even catch up.

When your body is submerged in sea water, your nervous system receives a very specific set of signals that it almost never gets on land.

Uniform pressure across the body.
Slower, deeper breathing.
Reduced gravitational load.
Consistent sensory input instead of constant noise.

This combination activates the parasympathetic nervous system - the part responsible for rest, digestion, repair, and recovery.

Not metaphorically -> But physiologically.

Studies show that immersion in water increases heart rate variability, one of the clearest markers of nervous system regulation and resilience.

Cortisol - the primary stress hormone - drops measurably after time in the sea.

The vagus nerve, which acts as a brake on stress responses, becomes more active through slow breathing and gentle pressure on the chest and abdomen.

This is why people feel clearer after being in the water.
Why problems feel smaller.
Why decisions feel less urgent.
Why time seems to stretch.

It’s not that the ocean “makes you calm”.

It tells your body that it’s safe enough to stop being on alert.

And when the body shifts state, the mind follows.

That’s regulation!

Not relaxation.
Not distraction.
Not escapism.

Just a nervous system returning to balance.

This is why swimming, freediving, and scuba diving often feel deeply grounding even when nothing exciting is happening.

The stillness isn’t learned.
It’s unlocked.

If this made something click for you, do one thing:

👉 Share this with someone who loves the ocean but doesn’t know why it feels so powerful.

Sometimes understanding the mechanism makes the experience even richer.

For nearly 20 years of diving - and around 10 as an instructor — I genuinely believed that one hour on a single tank on ...
27/12/2025

For nearly 20 years of diving - and around 10 as an instructor — I genuinely believed that one hour on a single tank on a reef was enough.

And to be honest… I was probably a bit smug about it.

I taught recreational diving, guided countless dives, and felt completely content staying well within no-deco limits.

Technical diving felt unnecessary, extreme, and honestly a little disconnected from the kind of diving I enjoyed and taught.

Then I moved to Malta.

The wrecks were deeper. The dives were more demanding. And the people I was diving with - especially the team at - weren’t chasing depth or ego.

They were calm. Methodical. Unrushed. Everything I admired in a diver, turned up a notch.

So I stepped into technical training, cautiously.

What surprised me most wasn’t the depth.
It wasn’t the stages or the gas switches.
It wasn’t even the decompression.

It was how slow everything became.

Tech diving taught me patience.
It taught me planning over improvisation.
It taught me that redundancy doesn’t increase stress - it removes it.

That buoyancy and trim aren’t “nice skills” but foundations.
That gas planning is about clarity, not restriction.
That awareness is something you build deliberately, not something you hope shows up.

And here’s the part I didn’t expect:

It made me a better recreational diver.
And a much better instructor.

I now teach from lived experience, not just standards or theory I once overheard on a dive boat.

I understand why things are taught the way they are. I see problems earlier. I react less. I create more space for students to feel calm and capable underwater.

I’m not an elite tech diver.
I’m not a CCR explorer.
I’ve logged around 50 staged decompression dives so far.

But technical diving humbled me - and that humility has been one of the most valuable lessons of my diving life.

If you’re a recreational diver or instructor who’s ever thought:

“Tech isn’t for me”

or

“I don’t need that kind of diving”

I once thought the same.

Sometimes progression isn’t about going deeper.
It’s about going deeper into understanding.

Curious to hear: what belief about diving did you once hold that later changed?

Address

Sliema

Telephone

+35679422630

Website

https://sys.travelersubmerged.com/mindful-diver-free-email-course

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Welcome to Traveler Submerged

Good day lovely people,

Welcome to Traveler Submerged! If you’ve found your way to this page, you’ve probably found me on instagram, visited my travel blog or seen some of my photography. Allow me to introduce myself...

My name is Rob, I’m a South African guy in my mid thirties, and over the last decade i’ve been on one hell of a ride, having lived and worked on various islands between East and West Africa. From the remote island’s of Sao Tome e Principe off the coast of Gabon to the dream destination of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.

I’ve worked in various hospitality fields from running food and beverage departments for top 5 star hotels and resorts, service consulting for restaurants to running a scuba center and even owning my own boutique guest house in Mauritius. I now find myself living in the vibey, ultra cool coastal city of Cape Town, South Africa where I work for one of the major online hotel booking sites.